All That She Wants (Connor's Point of View Part 1) Page 4

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what world you live in, Connor, but in mine, bread scraps are sometimes all you get.”

  I really liked this girl, but she was slave to the same notion as almost everybody in her position: that circumstances – especially money and opportunity – are dictated by outside forces.

  Usually, they’re not.

  More often they’re dictated by our attitudes, and how we react to those outside forces.

  I wondered if I should tell her that…and decided, Yeah, let’s see how she handles it.

  “We either make our own realities, Lily, or we accept the realities others impose upon us. You’ve got way too much going for you to accept a reality that includes Klaus as a part of it.”

  Maybe I stretched it too far. Maybe I was too pedantic, too lecturing, too judgmental. Whatever the case, I could see her clamp down and the defenses go up.

  Fuck, I thought, without even knowing exactly why I cared so much.

  I came to a halt, caught her arm, spun her around gently to face me, and stared deep into her eyes.

  (I have to admit, in retrospect, it was all worth it just to get to touch her again.)

  “Did I have a lot of advantages growing up? Yes I did,” I said, as earnestly as I could. “I’m a very lucky guy, and I recognize that. But part of my upbringing was that I learned my strengths, and I learned what I was worth, and I never let anybody tell me differently. When I look at you, Lily, I see a beautiful woman – ”

  Her face betrayed everything – a whole whirlwind of emotions, but most powerful of all:

  She was attracted to me.

  And she liked it when I said she was beautiful.

  For the first time in over a year, my heart skipped a beat.

  And in that instant, I decided I wanted to sleep with her tonight.

  All of that raced through my head as I kept talking.

  “ – who is poised, very intelligent, in control of herself, doesn’t take any crap – ”

  Should I?

  Yeah… let’s have a little fun.

  “ – oh, wait… skip that last part,” I said, and made a face as though I were making a mental note for future reference. Then I turned around and started walking – which was good, because I didn’t want her to see the grin on my face.

  “Is it this way?” I called over my shoulder.

  I could almost hear her fuming as she ran after me.

  “You know, you talk a big game for a guy who’s here to look at somebody else’s business files on a Friday night after closing hours,” she taunted me.

  I laughed. “Uh oh, did I touch a nerve?”

  I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.

  Which was perfect.

  There’s only one cardinal sin when dealing with a beautiful woman: being boring.

  They’ll forgive you just about anything else but that.

  “Why are you here, exactly?” she challenged me.

  I put my hands in my pockets and looked around casually, like I was taking stock of the place. “Oh, I don’t know… thinking about buying the company.”

  She snorted derisively. “Right.”

  “Maybe one day. Once I save up my pennies.”

  “So you can have a whole company to kiss your ass, huh?”

  I looked over at her, momentarily shocked. And then I burst into a belly laugh.

  Damn, this little secretary has balls of steel!

  Or had, anyway.

  She blushed and looked like she immediately regretted saying it – but I was impressed she’d said it at all.

  She was going to bust my balls?

  Fine.

  I’d bust hers, too.

  “I don’t know about other people kissing my ass, but…”

  I angled my head back and took a look at her derriere.

  Her very nice derriere.

  “…I wouldn’t mind kissing somebody else’s.”

  BAM – she went red as a fire engine, instantaneously.

  I grinned and kept walking –

  But she didn’t.

  “Hey!” she snapped from somewhere behind me.

  Uh-oh.

  Might’ve gone too far with that last one.

  I turned around and gave her an innocent Who, me? look.

  “What?”

  She crossed her arms and scowled. “You know that’s highly inappropriate, right?”

  Yeah, she was pissed.

  And to be honest, she had every right to be. I was an outsider here, in a business setting, and I was making inappropriate comments of a highly sexual nature. Sure, she’d been busting my chops earlier – but over money. And I had invited it by acting cocky.

  She hadn’t asked for me to leer at her.

  I’d gambled hard, because that’s what I like to do. High risk, high reward.

  But this time it didn’t come out in my favor.

  “Sorry,” I said, and meant it.

  More than anything, I was pissed at myself that I’d played this all wrong. After a year-long failed relationship, and then eight months of self-imposed celibacy, I was apparently pretty rusty with women.

  “I apologize,” I continued. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You’re just… sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  Something in her expression shifted. “‘You’re just’ what?”

  Aha.

  Maybe I hadn’t played it wrong.

  “Well, you’re – ”

  Her body leaned in the slightest bit.

  I could see she wanted me to say it.

  I’m back in the game.

  I shook my head ruefully. “Never mind.”

  “‘You’re just’ what?” she demanded.

  Okay, I’d played it exactly right.

  I smiled and decided not to feed her another line.

  I was just going to tell her the truth.

  “I find you very attractive,” I said.

  Her entire expression went soft and doe-eyed.

  “I’m used to being a little more… aggressive, and I forgot the setting and my manners. I’m sorry.”

  That’s a little heavy, Templeton – lighten it up some.

  I held up both my arms like this was a stick-up. “I’ll stop, just don’t file a sexual harassment lawsuit, okay?”

  She stood there, and her expression slowly hardened as she thought it over.

  She was more difficult to read than I’d initially thought…

  …which I kind of liked.

  Definitely a challenge.

  Which I really liked.

  She took forever to say anything. If I were a cynical man, I would have said she was letting me roast in the fire for her own amusement. But that was probably just the last woman I was with, who used to do it all the time.

  Besides, Lily seemed a little too sweet for that.

  “I didn’t say stop,” she muttered. “Just… tone it down a little.”

  HELL YEAH.

  “Agreed,” I grinned. “Now let’s go look at those files, shall we?”

  12

  We threaded our way through the cubicles in silence.

  I didn’t say anything because I was running through the various companies I needed to see.

  She was quiet because she was nervous.

  I could hear it in her voice when she finally spoke. She was trying to be sassy, though she didn’t quite pull off the breezy tone she was aiming for.

  She was still challenging me, though, which I liked.

  “You still haven’t said what’s so important about these files that you have to waste a perfectly good Friday night.”

  I grinned. “Actually, I believe I did.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that’s right – you’re thinking about buying the company. How about a real reason?”

  I kept smiling, just to let her know I was playing around. “Well… if I were Klaus, I might say something about it not being any of your business. But since we’re friends, let me put it this way instead: th
ere are things I’m not at liberty to talk about, but you could say I’m the… advance man on a very important business deal, and I wanted to check out some things before we go through with it.”

  “The LMGK buyout,” she said, looking exactly like somebody in a film who’d suddenly puzzled out who the murderer was.

  And here I’d thought it was all hush-hush. “You know about that?”

  She blushed. “Everybody’s been whispering about it the last few weeks. And I’ve seen a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “…such as things I’m not at liberty to talk about.”

  Point for Lily. “Touché.”

  She looked at me with distrust. “But what I haven’t seen is you before.”

  Your CEO could take a few lessons from you on appropriate levels of suspicion, Lily.

  “Now you have. In the flesh.”

  She didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, but she didn’t say anything else.

  We reached her desk, and she bent over and started looking for something.

  At first I was just watching her ass – daaaaamn – but something plucked at my subconscious.

  The word ‘Teramore’ on her computer screen.

  Oh my God, this is too perfect.

  “Hey – are those the numbers for Teramore?” I asked.

  She looked around, looked at the screen – and then suddenly bolted upright in panic. “Those are confidential!”

  I gave her a Give me a break look as I bent over her desk and started scrolling through with the mouse. “Remember, both Klaus and your CEO said you should give me anything I want – oh, wait, is that an inappropriate remark?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’ll file it under acceptable innuendos,” she said coolly.

  I laughed. She was pretty damn clever, I had to give her that. “Acceptable innuendoes… that’s good…”

  Then I turned back to the document.

  LMGK had just completed an exec comp report for Teramore. In a little bit of back-channel negotiation, I had convinced Teramore to hire Exerton to do an identical report – as long as I footed the bill.

  I’d already inspected the report from LGMK and run it past my own people, so I knew what the numbers should be –

  And Klaus had gotten every one of them wrong.

  The report was a travesty. Sloppy, incomplete, and inaccurate.

  I got to a particularly idiotic recommendation and muttered “Bullshit” without realizing it.

  “Excuse me?” Lily asked. She sounded shocked.

  I looked up at her and pondered my next move.

  I liked her. Okay, that was an understatement. I wanted to sleep with her – but this was a make-or-break moment. If I trusted her with this, and she gave me the wrong answer, I’d have to take a pass. I couldn’t compromise my reason for being here just because I wanted to take her for a roll in the hay.

  But… she’d been honest with me about her feelings about Klaus.

  And she was a whole lot smarter than I’d initially given her credit for.

  Not to mention she had some spine.

  Screw it.

  High risk, high reward.

  “Can I trust you with something, Lily?”

  She blanched a little. “Uh… I guess…?”

  Not looking good.

  “Yes or no. I don’t want this getting back to Klaus.”

  I could see the wheels turning in her head again.

  Finally, she nodded. “Yes.”

  I believed her – and I felt a lot more relief than I would have expected.

  “LMGK already did their own appraisal of Teramore. I told – uh, we convinced Teramore to let you guys make a pass at it, too, to see your numbers and compare how Exerton would evaluate the situation.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Wait – you mean, this is a test for Exerton Consulting?” she asked as she pointed at the monitor.

  I nodded.

  “It’s not an actual job – it’s just a test?”

  “Well, Klaus thinks it’s a job, and Teramore will actually pay the bill as though it were an actual job. ” Once my check to Teramore clears, I thought. “But yeah, it’s a test.”

  “One we didn’t know we were taking.”

  “We didn’t want you to go to more trouble than usual. Like how the food critic doesn’t want the restaurant to know when he’s visiting or who he really is.”

  “But why – ”

  It was a beautiful thing: I could actually see her thought process play out lightning fast on her features. I saw all the gears turn and lock into place as she grasped the entire situation – that this was one of the final tests for the buyout, and Klaus had bungled it.

  She gasped. “Oh…”

  “Yup.”

  She winced. “I guess we didn’t do so well.”

  “No, you didn’t. Your appraisal of the market is waaay off.” I glanced over at her, not wanting her to think I was criticizing her personally. “Not you, of course – Klaus’s.”

  But she hadn’t taken it as a personal slight. She just gave me a Hmmph, it figures expression. “Well, he always does that.”

  Wait – what?

  I stood up, suddenly a lot more interested. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve proofed all his reports over the last six months. I have to double-check everything, and, well… he tends to tell the client what they want to hear. Not necessarily reality.”

  Whoa, whoa – time out.

  She was a secretary – and she knew that the head of the Exec Comp Division of Exerton Consulting was an idiot? Not just an asshole, but incompetent?

  “Wait – wait, wait, wait,” I said, trying to wrap my head around this. “Do you know about – ”

  And for the next five minutes I hit her with every question I could think of on cash compensation, option grants, deferred compensation, long-term incentive plans, retirement packages, and perks.

  “What’s the typical long-term incentive plan for a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, lower end, market cap $1 billion?”

  She knew it.

  “How can you manipulate stock option grants as part of compensation without running afoul of the SEC for backdating?”

  She gave me three examples – two more than I was expecting.

  “What’s the best way to structure long-term incentive plans?”

  “It depends on what you want to incentivize,” she said.

  Right answer. Then she proceeded to give me examples.

  HOLY SHIT.

  “You didn’t go to school for this?” I asked, stunned.

  “No.”

  “How did you pick all this up?!”

  “I don’t know… just while I was doing my job.”

  And she shrugged like it was no big deal.

  When it was, as Joe Biden would say, a BIG fucking deal.

  The secretary was better at the job than the VP. In fact, she had probably kept his ass from being called out and publicly humiliated on several occasions.

  And they probably paid her 2% of what he made.

  Not to mention he was an absolute prick to her.

  It completely boggled my mind.

  I shook my head in wonder. “Incredible.”

  “What?” she asked nervously.

  “That you’re an assistant and not a junior executive, at the very least.”

  She stared at me with those big brown eyes and blushed. “Well… it’s nothing really, just what I’ve picked up in the last six – ”

  “STOP,” I snapped. “Don’t do that. Don’t be modest; don’t lessen your worth like that. You’re an assistant, but you just showed a better grasp of the big picture than a couple of Harvard MBA’s I’ve hired in the last month.”

  Which was absolutely true – and which was making me rethink what I was paying those MBA’s.

  “Don’t play it off,” I continued. “It’s damn impressive. You’re damn impressive. Don’t ever make yourself out to be any less than what you really are.”

>   Situations like this always infuriate me. She had so much potential – so MANY people have so much potential, like that Stanley guy down in the lobby – but they just threw it all away because they didn’t believe in themselves.

  And the fact that she was throwing it all away just fuckin’ killed me.

  “It’s also a little sad,” I said, because I couldn’t hold back my feelings.

  She’d been staring at me slightly glassy-eyed up until now. I figured I’d been boring her, but then she jerked back into the here and now.

  “What is?”

  “That a woman like you is working for an idiot like Klaus. The situation should be reversed – and if it were, I would hope you’d fire his ass.”

  She grinned. “In a New York second.”

  I was happy to hear that answer – but I didn’t just want to inspire her à la Tony Robbins and leave it at that.

  So I decided to bring it back to flirtatious.

  “I see so much potential in you, Lily,” I said, my voice low and seductive. “A huge future. Somebody who could really go out there and kick some ass. Smart, capable, funny, charming… beautiful, if it’s not inappropriate to say that again…”

  Her mouth dropped open the slightest bit more.

  Damn I wanted to kiss her…

  Not yet. There’s still business to attend to.

  But if I couldn’t kiss her, I was going to tease her.

  “It’s too bad you’re such a doofus,” I said, and grinned – just to let her know I wasn’t serious.

  Her eyes went from glassy to outraged. “What?! I am not!”

  I was about to assure her it was a joke when she suddenly asked, “…what exactly do you mean by ‘doofus’?”

  “Somebody who, either out of a lack of intelligence – which isn’t your problem – or a deficit of self-esteem, sells herself short and puts up with crap she shouldn’t. Only doofuses work for douchebags,” I said, using a humorous tone of voice so that she knew I was joking.

  Sort of.

  She crossed her arms and scowled. “I have to pay rent, I have to eat, and if the only way to do that is to work for an asshole, sorry, Mr. Bigshot ‘Gonna Buy The Company Someday,’ but I like having a roof over my head and dinner every night. It’s not going to be that way forever. It’s only temporary. Haven’t you ever had to put up with crap, ever, or is your life so charmed that you never had to overcome any setbacks?”

  Impressive.